Our Beautiful Boys

A Novel

By: Sameer Pandya

Narrated by: Shahjehan Khan

When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets—and the secrets of their parents—threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only.

“Timely and timeless . . . gorgeous yet understated storytelling . . . The struggles in Our Beautiful Boys are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations.”—Nic Stone, The New York Times Book Review

Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years.

But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys’ parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they’re willing to reveal to clear their names.

Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play.

©2025 Sameer Pandya (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Timely and timeless . . . Pandya presents flawed but understandable people trying to navigate a murky situation with high stakes: the futures of these boys. Above all else, [it] is a book about the lies we knowingly or unwittingly tell ourselves.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Pandya reveals not just the secret heart of adolescence but also the fragile veneer of an adult world striving—and often failing—to guide it.”—UCSB, The Current

“Our Beautiful Boys is a gift arriving in bookstores, coming in like a lion, as approachable as a lamb. The novel’s prose is pellucid, straightforward, enveloping the reader, insinuating in the way serious fiction turns us in the culture, facets our seeing, our understanding.”—Zyzzyva

Cool Kids Break Bad

No spoilers, this well-written book is a study on class, peer pressure, parental pressure, and doing the right thing. The characters were fleshed out and not one-dimensional. Overall, I really enjoyed this book but the author could have wrapped it up a bit sooner. It lost a bit of steam by the end. That said, this book is much better than most contemporary fiction. In sum, it's well worth a credit and a listen!

Perhaps it was the subject matter of this one (focused on teenagers), but I enjoyed the author's first book more. I connected with the protagonist's fallibility and good intentions. I'm looking forward to Mr. Pandya's next offering.